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Nature - Birds & Birdwatching
• Doubleday Canada • Hardcover, 384 pages
• October 2005 • $39.95 • 0-385-66048-0
ABOUT THE BOOK
In this stunning assemblage of words and images, novelist
and avid birdwatcher Graeme Gibson has crafted an extraordinary
tribute to the venerable relationship between humanity
and birds.
Birds have ever been the symbols of humanity’s
highest aspirations. As divine messengers, symbols
of our yearning for the heavens, or avatars of glorious
song and colour, birds have stirred our imaginations
from the moment we first looked up into the sky.
Whether as the Christian dove, or the Aztec Quetzalcoatl,
or in Plato’s representation of the human soul
growing wings and feathers, religion and philosophy
have looked to birds as representatives of our best
selves — that part of us not bound to the earth.
With the devotion of a birder and hoarder of words,
Gibson has spent twenty years collecting the literary
and artistic forms our affinity for birds has taken
over the centuries. Birds appear again and again in
mythology and folk tales and in literature by writers
as diverse as Aesop, Shakespeare, Poe, Coleridge,
Borges, and Eliot. They’ve been omens, allegories,
disguises and guides; they’ve been worshipped,
eaten, feared, and loved. Nor does Gibson forget the
fascination birds hold for science, as the Galapagos
finches did for Darwin. Birds appear charmingly and
tellingly in the work of such naturalists as W.H.
Hudson, Peter Matthiessen, Farley Mowat, and Barry
Lopez.
So intensely and universally are we drawn to birds,
it’s small wonder that birdwatching is one of
the most popular activities in the English-speaking
world.
Gorgeously illustrated and woven from centuries of
human response to the delights of the feathered tribes,
The Bedside Book of Birds is for
everyone who is passionate about birds and all they
mean to humanity.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
photo credit: Peter Everard
Smith
Graeme Gibson is the acclaimed author of Communion,
Perpetual Motion, and Gentleman
Death. He is a past president of PEN Canada
and the recipient of both the Harbourfront Festival
Prize and the Toronto Arts Award, and is a member of
the Order of Canada. He lives in Toronto with writer
Margaret Atwood. |